As Hiridrhen passes a torch to Dieter and the last of the company march off on their errands, the Ring Room becomes ominously quiet once more... the lapping of new flames joins that of Wen's the humble candles as Dieter get the torch fired...

Olaf and Torben begin to feel a prickling on the backs of their necks as Highbough, the senile old Elf, starts muttering to himself in an unknowable--but markedly nasty--tongue as he fidgets with a hand mirror of all things... silently, they each rather wish he would stop it.

Meanwhile, Wen is momentarily distracted from Highbough's turn of demeanor by a tiny chirping sound, and looks down to see a rat sitting obediently on its haunches by his feet. Laying of the floor next it is is... a tiny dark... what is that, a cigar? How curious...

Highbough's eyes are copper-fire and all in a flash he understands! The Ring he sees reflected is not stone but a bright inferno, a swirling cosmos of light, an incandescent vortex/tunnel leading to infinity. The runes around it are fiery blue-green auroras and at a glimpse he recognises Astraea and Estrella and, at the apex, the rune-name of Izar--all distant stars; points of light in an impossibly vast network that spans the heavens!

Here is a noisy, hot, red, place. The light is too dim and too red, but you stand outside, on a rocky hard pan desert--of sorts. A huge indigo sky with roils overhead crawling with alien, inky clouds. The dune-like ground intermittently features ridges of black rock, and is pieced by a litter of broken spears and arrows and protruding remains of long buried bodies; fallen in battles long ago and now packed down amid the uncountable grains of gritty red sand.

A hot, brutal wind is howling through the dunes causing sand to thrash ahead of it, and your cloaks to flick and snap dramatically. It will be necessary to almost shout to be heard. Behind you, leaning at a slight angle and a foot or two buried in the red sand, is a stone ring very much like the one in the Ring Room--although this one appears harshly weathered and disused. Alas! Highbough finds the mirror in his hand falling away into a fine dust that vanishes into the wind...

"Excellent, it works!" exclaims Highbough. "The voyage was one-way as I suspected... I hope you all said goodbye to the others? Now, there should be a fortress around here somewhere. Let's organize our search so we don't get separated." The old Elf would look for any high ground or landmarks he can climb to have a look-see of this alien landscape.

Squinting into the hot wind to scan the immediate surrounds, Highbough--and those in his company--soon realise they are in something of a shallow depression; surrounded by dune-ridges that might in fact be sheltering them from the worst of the wind. Sand is whipped fiercely from the summit of the surrounding dunes and ridges; 60-80 yards in any direction. A short hike will surely bring any of them to a higher vantage for a better look around...

mushgnome wrote:"Excellent, it works!" exclaims Highbough. "The voyage was one-way as I suspected... I hope you all said goodbye to the others? Now, there should be a fortress around here somewhere. Let's organize our search so we don't get separated." The old Elf would look for any high ground or landmarks he can climb to have a look-see of this alien landscape.

"One-way?" Dieter snarls. "Don't you think you should have made that clear before you brought us here? As I recall, the plan was for us to have a rest and for you lot to get your spells for the day, and then do something rash."

He shakes his head, eyes scanning the distance. "Elves!"

Once he spots a defensible looking place in the surrounding high ground, he'll confer with Olaf on heading there.